ST. LOUIS — Jack St. Ivany doesn’t necessarily have any hard or bitter feelings about the Philadelphia Flyers.
After they selected him in the fourth round (No. 112 overall) of the 2018 NHL Draft, the parties did not come to an agreement on a contract, and when his NHL rights with the Flyers expired, he opted to sign with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2022.
It was nothing personal. Just business.
But now that St. Ivany and the Penguins know they’ll be facing the Flyers in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the feelings are anything but inert.
“We just don’t like them. They don’t like us,” St. Ivany said. “It’s a rivalry. It’s awesome. It’s what you want for playoff hockey. Everyone in this room is really excited for this weekend and to get it going. Just can’t wait.”
The Flyers secured their postseason hopes Monday with a 3-2 home shootout win against the Carolina Hurricanes, and with that, a matchup with the Penguins, one of the NHL’s most enduring rivalries.
Framed within the geographical limits of each being situated in the Keystone State, the rivalry is anything but a mundane coincidence based on both teams being located north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Be it the time Ron Hextall chased Robbie Brown for having the audacity of scoring a goal in the 1989 Patrick Division final, Keith Primeau beating Ron Tugnutt for a goal in the fifth overtime of Game 4 in a 2000 Eastern Conference quarterfinal or Sidney Crosby swatting Jakub Voracek glove away off the ice in a 2012 Eastern Conference quarterfinal, the postseason history of this rivalry is speckled with moments of bellicosity.
The regular-season series between the two teams during the 2025-26 campaign wasn’t banal either.
The teams each won two games, with the Flyers claiming victory via shootouts on both occasions.
Most notably, in the first game of the season series Oct. 28, the Flyers won 3-2 in a shootout that did not include the talents of Crosby or some of the Flyers’ top players, such as Tyson Foerster, Owen Tippett and Trevor Zegras because several players received 10-minute misconduct penalties at the end of the overtime period for a scrum that devolved into bedlam.
TREVOR ZEGRAS AND TYSON FOERSTER JUMP PARKER WOTHERSPOON AND ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. THIS IS THE BATTLE OF PENNSYLVANIA.#LetsGoFlyerspic.twitter.com/u2x4tHF4Ma
— x – Flyers Clips (@Flyers_Clips) October 29, 2025
“It definitely gets heated,” said Penguins defenseman Ryan Shea, one of eight recipients of those misconduct penalties that night. “Every time you play them, it does. Both teams play into that.
“Obviously, there’s a couple of different games, and two of them, I would say, we played our structure. We were able to forecheck them pretty good and play in the (offensive) zone. The others, I guess, we kind of backed off and gave them too much time. But it’s the playoffs, everything is ramped up. Hitting, structure. It’s going to be a tight series, and we’re going to have to be our best.”
One player who figures to be knee-deep in the fury of this series is chaotic defenseman Connor Clifton, who led the team in hits (179) and was third in penalty minutes (53) entering the regular-season finale against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday.
He expects the postseason series to be an amplified version of the regular-season series.
“I anticipate more,” Clifton said. “Not even that it’s just (Philadelphia). I think it’s just playoffs in general. You don’t want to give an inch out there.”
Most members of the Penguins haven’t been with the team long enough to have been a part of the last postseason series against the Flyers. In 2018, the Penguins dispatched the Flyers, 4-2, in an Eastern Conference first-round series.
Heck, even coach Dan Muse, in his first year behind the Penguins’ bench, is new to the rivalry.
“You see it from afar, but until you’re actually in it and seeing it firsthand, you don’t realize how good of a rivalry it is and the history of the teams,” Muse said. “That was very obvious there in the games played this year. They were all really good games.”
And they aren’t bound to be boring games.
Franchise pillars such as Crosby, forward Evgeni Malkin and defenseman Kris Letang have the metaphorical scars to verify that.
And in Letang’s case, he may have a literal scar from the occasion Flyers forward Scott Hartnell (allegedly) bit him during a 2009 regular-season contest.
“Just the pettiness, everything,” St. Ivany said. “Every battle, every puck, especially in those series, you could see how much it means to the guys and how much they take it really personally, every single time they step on the ice. Tons of memories.
“Excited to see Playoff Sid, Playoff Geno, Playoff Tanger and to see them get to work.”